As St. Olaf students, we put aside most of our environmental autonomy in exchange for convenience. We trust that the bureaucracy of St. Olaf makes sustainable decisions for us, but at the same time we wallow in anxiety about the climate and try to enjoy the “best” four years of our lives – composting occasionally and driving less. This small-scale mentality is tricking us – Big Ole is doing its best for the climate, but that doesn’t mean we students get a pass. Big Ole is starting to look more and more like a 70-meter-tall effigy of climate-change escapism. Instead of relying on others to make progress with the climate, we students need to take the reins as we plan our futures.
This generation of college students have grown up in a climate anxiety media cycle. Our brains have developed in an echo chamber: “we’re all drowning or drying up like raisins in sixty years unless someone does something about the climate!” We know this – but we also habitually seek escapism from our climate realities, myself included.
I make my own excuses about my emissions and my wastefulness. For a long time I figured I couldn’t avoid meat since it sits in the caf regardless of my personal choice. I’d commute via bike and still feel the guilt of ordering products online. Doing emissions calculus and cycling through daily anxieties on climate is a visible poison of privilege. I spent my time doing small-potato emissions calculus with no idea what actually changing my lifestyle looks like — the definition of unproductive thinking.
Then, I went out West for a semester. I studied off-campus at the Oregon Extension, a place where one’s lived reality is much closer to the natural world. I witnessed the mile-wide plume of a wildfire crest over a hill in Northern California, I looked in awe at some of the largest bird marshes in North America standing dry and devoid of life. I read lots of books, I cooked my own food, and I understood just how wonderful living with less is. My emissions likely fell to near-zero.
Then I became a St. Olaf student again. I fell back into my old habits, surrounded by my many possessions and conveniences, and feeling as though that semester spent learning and growing was a fever dream. Where did all the environmental action go?
Taking environmental action at our age can feel insignificant, but the truth is so much more powerful than we think. As students, we are entirely composed of potential. We’re the future investors, inventors, leaders and givers to the world. The little things we do about climate in the present matter very little in comparison to what we do in the future.
Here’s what I beg of you: make the climate, the environment, and the natural world a part of your future career. It doesn’t matter what industry! Be creative when you dream about your future, and fill your dream-job, dream-house, and dream-family of years ahead not with material possessions, but instead with compassion for the world around us.
Become the family therapist who lives entirely off of the grid. Become the French/music theory major that owns 30 acres of restored prairie. Become the small-business owner that owns a zero-emissions building. Whatever you dream of doing, understand how taking climate action can be infused into it. Thinking like this is how we students can truly make a difference.
Justin Vondran is from
Osceola, Wis.
His major Is English.
